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Sup all.. I was reading some thread about the bussiness model of Cryptic... and the only thing i notice was tons of complains and fans praising the cryptic model of sub and cash shop...

There is a bunch of people who find it unpleasant to pay for stuff in games, but let me tell you something if u are the one that start making faces when someone say: U need to pay for this...

When u get Free Servers, Development Teams, Net Bandwidth, and so on, for FREE!!!!! then ask for that stuff for free, or little cost...

There is a rumor around that some mmos, are going to sell the content update patches... [mod edit]... but here is where my 33mhz brains gets in...

Ultima online = almost 15 bucks (13) ----- 1997

Lineage = 15 bucks ----- 1998

Everquest = 15 bucks (14.99) ----- 1999

Anarchy Online = bucks ----- 2001

Galaxies = 15 bucks ----- 2003

WoW = 15 bucks ----- 2004

War = 15 bucks ----- 2008

AION = 15 bucks ----- 2009

STO = 15 bucks ----- 2010

there is more mmos around, but i can remember at least 13 years of mmos... and the price of subscription have been 15 dollars for years!!!!...

Now go and check the inflation rate since 1997... I dont think it have been stuck...

My point is... with all the inflation and raising costs, the 15 bucks per month is falling short.. way short.. one day there is going to be one developer that will charge a 20 bucks or 25 bucks (24.99) sub per month, and everyone else will follow... but since raising the sub cost will cause too much scandal, they are adding cash shops...

Lets face it people, 15 bucks per month is not enough for what u do with the game services... bandwidth usage, database, and so on...

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I get what your saying and even agree with you, however....

I believe UO and EQ were both $9.95/month and have gradually increased in price to the current market level. So subscription prices have in fact increased, by almost 50%. I think DAoC was the first mmorpg to charge more than $9.95.

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Actually, for the longest time, people have been complaining, that 15 bucks/months is overdoing it and that the price needs to be lowered. They've stopped just recently, in the face of inflation. Maybe it's because the true value has caught up with it only recently, and the pricing was "with a reserve"?

Or maybe it's because devs expect much higher numbers, which would cover the expenses.

And in reality, bandwidth and server maintenance doesn't cost THAT much.

I hate WoW because it made my plush hamster kill himself, created twin clones of Hitler, punched Superboy Prime in reality, stared my dog down, spoiled my grandmother, assimilated me into the Borg, then made me into a real boy, just to make me a woman again.

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Sup all.. I was reading some thread about the bussiness model of Cryptic... and the only thing i notice was tons of complains and other fanbois praising the cryptic model of sub and cash shop...

There is a bunch of people who find it unpleasant to pay for stuff in games, but let me tell you something if u are the one that start making faces when someone say: U need to pay for this...

When u get Free Servers, Development Teams, Net Bandwidth, and so on, for FREE!!!!! then ask for that stuff for free, or little cost...

There is a rumor around that some mmos, are going to sell the content update patches... (more people whining)... but here is where my 33mhz brains gets in...

Ultima online = almost 15 bucks (13) ----- 1997

Lineage = 15 bucks ----- 1998

Everquest = 15 bucks (14.99) ----- 1999

Anarchy Online = bucks ----- 2001

Galaxies = 15 bucks ----- 2003

WoW = 15 bucks ----- 2004

War = 15 bucks ----- 2008

AION = 15 bucks ----- 2009

STO = 15 bucks ----- 2010

there is more mmos around, but i can remember at least 13 years of mmos... and the price of subscription have been 15 dollars for years!!!!...

Now go and check the inflation rate since 1997... I dont think it have been stuck...

My point is... with all the inflation and raising costs, the 15 bucks per month is falling short.. way short.. one day there is going to be one developer that will charge a 20 bucks or 25 bucks (24.99) sub per month, and everyone else will follow... but since raising the sub cost will cause too much scandal, they are adding cash shops...

Lets face it people, 15 bucks per month is not enough for what u do with the game services... bandwidth usage, database, and so on...

thats why asian company use the f2p model !they get more money and you like it because game is free!grin!

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I personally feel that the price of $15 is the "sweet spot" right now for mmos, and is probably the most accepted price that is both high enough, and will get the most subs possible. Sure, they could increase the fee, but then sub numbers could decrease causing them to make less of a net profit. It is all about the balance.

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Runescape charges 6 bucks, Dofus 7 a month and they can feed their wives and children.

Each of those games that charge 15 bucks a month can feed their 2 wives and 8 children already. I am not going to pay $20 a month. They don't deserve to have 3 wives and 12 children each. Don't feed them. Let them starve to death.

If companies want to go f2p with cash shop, fine for me. If they cash shops are super expensive I won't touch them. If their cash shops/advertisement are scams, I am a do-gooder, I will make the public aware ;)

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The earlier games EQ/AC/UO were $9.99 a MO. at release, they are NOW $14.99 because games released in the last 6 years have upped it to this amount.

Hell the price upped to $12.99 for the afore mentioned games in 2001 when DAoC was released as that is what Mythic started to charge and everyone raised their prices because they saw the market would bare it.

In '03/'04 the prices were again raised to the $14.99 and all the previous MMO's followed suit.

All I am saying is the prices of MMO's were being increased by a few dollars every 3-4 years until they reached $14.99 and have not gone up because of the outcry towards doing so.

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Frankly, I don't much care what they charge for subs. If it's a great MMO (say Everquest Next), I'd gladly pay $25 per month.

However, I am very much against cash shops. Cash shops allow a player to buy achievement within a game, where subs just buy playtime. No one should be able to by the Uber Sword of the Viking King, they should have to go out and earn it through adventuring.

I think Cash Shops are a failed model. I hear Free Realms may be going to subs.

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I hate the way most MMOs operate. $15/mo for many MMOs is just the price to walk in the door. It also happens to be a barrier if I ever set the game down.

A few MMOs use that $15 to create new content and release it as part of the sub and do not charge for expansions.

In fact, I tend to cancel MMOs if they don't have regular content updates because I'll get bored fast. This happened with Warhammer Online when they announced a new dungeon that wouldn't come out until 5 months later. Development on that game happened at an awful pace.

At the moment I'm enjoying DDO at a nice leisurely pace. There's no sub, and a total of $65 spent on the game has lasted me a long time.

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The server and bandwidth requirements of MMOs today have grown significantly slower than the capability of connections and server infrastructure, compared to 10 years ago. Meaning, you don't necessarily need the top of the line, most expensive, server farms to run an MMO these days. So technically, the hardware side of maintenance is comparatively cheaper than 10 years ago.

Also, most MMOs offer discounts for subbing for allotments larger than a month. If you sub for 6 months you can pay as little as $12 a month, if not less, for some MMOs.

Cryptic is not justified in their moneygrab. If they're really hurting that badly for cash then they can raise their subscription fees, but every other MMO developer seems to be making a pretty penny for what they're currently charging, and some are charging less and still making a respectable profit.

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Prices have gone up. When i started MMOs $10 was basically the going rate and it stayed that way for several years.However, I am okay with $15 a month, in fact i prefer it to F2P. My problem is that not every game should be $15. If your game launches half finished, and not even up to par to other games, why not just lower the price?

I have played many games and there are many i have no problem paying $15 but there are other's where I would think $5 is too much because it's so clear it's "half" a product if that. It's like they want everything or nothing at all and tha seems silly.

"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk

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I have always felt that MMOs could get by just fine at 10$ a month.. Why its at 15$ now Ill never know. The prices started creeping up once gaming websites like Gamestorm ( EA bought it and several of its games before eventually shutting it down like a year later ) went away.

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OP you should do a bit more research before posting. Everquest was not $15 in 1999. I believe it was $10. It was raised a few years later and a few years after that had it's price raised once again to the current norm of $15.

Same with UO. I'm pretty sure it started out at or around $10 a month and had it's price raised eventually.

Still, it's unusual that after I'm guessing closer to 8-9 years than the OP's 15+ year estimate that we haven't seen an increase in MMO's pricing. I think a lot of this is due to the competition never nearing the success of WoW (and they wouldn't want to raise their price higher than the competition's, since players aren't likely to pay more when their primary competitor offers it for less) and WoW making comfortable profit that they wouldn't risk raising the price of their monthly fee.

One other thing of note is the actual retail price of video games has increased by about $10 over the last few years. I believe it mostly was a push by EA and it effects console games more than PC. The average price of video games use to be about $40-50 for a new triple A game, now it can cost $50-60.

Cryptic is getting a lot of backlash over their lifetime sub and cash shop business model. Most players aren't fooled, and when your top competitor (WoW) is offering $15 a month for a superior (in my opinion) quality game then why pay the same subscription fee and have to purchase items/content from the cash shop on top of that? That's just bad business.

The only way you'll see a change in subscription rates is if Blizzard raises their subscription rate. If they do every other MMO will likely follow suit (unless they want to try to offer a competitive rate). The same happened years ago when Everquest was the top MMO and they raised their subscription rate.

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Sup all.. I was reading some thread about the bussiness model of Cryptic... and the only thing i notice was tons of complains and other fanbois praising the cryptic model of sub and cash shop...

There is a bunch of people who find it unpleasant to pay for stuff in games, but let me tell you something if u are the one that start making faces when someone say: U need to pay for this...

When u get Free Servers, Development Teams, Net Bandwidth, and so on, for FREE!!!!! then ask for that stuff for free, or little cost...

There is a rumor around that some mmos, are going to sell the content update patches... (more people whining)... but here is where my 33mhz brains gets in...

Ultima online = almost 15 bucks (13) ----- 1997

Lineage = 15 bucks ----- 1998

Everquest = 15 bucks (14.99) ----- 1999

Anarchy Online = bucks ----- 2001

Galaxies = 15 bucks ----- 2003

WoW = 15 bucks ----- 2004

War = 15 bucks ----- 2008

AION = 15 bucks ----- 2009

STO = 15 bucks ----- 2010

there is more mmos around, but i can remember at least 13 years of mmos... and the price of subscription have been 15 dollars for years!!!!...

Now go and check the inflation rate since 1997... I dont think it have been stuck...

My point is... with all the inflation and raising costs, the 15 bucks per month is falling short.. way short.. one day there is going to be one developer that will charge a 20 bucks or 25 bucks (24.99) sub per month, and everyone else will follow... but since raising the sub cost will cause too much scandal, they are adding cash shops...

Lets face it people, 15 bucks per month is not enough for what u do with the game services... bandwidth usage, database, and so on...

You are forgeting something there: Competition. the amount of mmos in the market is bigger now that in the past, thats why they can't raise the amount of money the get. And with a lot of mmos, even the bigger names, going to free to play route, it will be probably even less the amount of money they ask for.

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Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I would happily pay 20 bucks a month for a good game with no cash shop.

Same, especially if that $20 a month was used for providing updates on a regualr basis. Hell, if they set up a designated plan and actually provided constant, quality content updates I would go up to $25-30 really.

1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.

2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.

3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.